DESIGN YOUR PLAN, PART 1

DISCLAIMER:

THINGS CHANGE! ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR CHOSEN SCHOOL'S WEBSITE FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION WHEN BUILDING YOUR DEGREE PLAN. WE OFFER NO GUARANTEES OF ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR PLAN.

(Okay. Yeah. I'm done with the caps thing there. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, put together your plan, but stay up-to-date with your school of choice by bookmarking the college's website and visiting it often. I will update this website with changes as I learn of them, and I do keep a close eye on the Big Three, but I cannot make any set-in-stone promises or guarantees. Don't let this stop or discourage you, though. While changes do happen, they are not totally insurmountable. Sometimes, they're a bit of a bummer, like when the schools decided to downgrade ALEKS Beginning Algebra to a remedial designation and quit awarding credit for it, but often they're good news, such as Saylor.org getting credit approval for some of their free courses. And remember, as you get closer to your degree completion, you'll be able to apply to your school and have an official evaluation done.)

So Step 3... degree planning.

This is one of those things that's probably going to seem frightfully complicated at first, but once you start really working with it, it will come together for you and you'll see it's not so difficult after all. Let's start with walking through a plan for a degree from Charter Oak State College (COSC), then Thomas Edison State College (TESC), then we'll finally work our way around to Excelsior.

Oh, you know how back in the GET STARTED section, I said something about how you don't want to sign up for any of the Big Three colleges right away? There was a very good reason for that. For every year you are enrolled in the school, you pay semester or annual fees. TESC calls it "annual enrollment tuition," but it's not really tuition in my book, because that implies you are paying for actual courses, and you aren't. For COSC, it's a "college semester fee," and at Excelsior, there's an "enrollment fee" and a "student service annual fee." You might be thinking, "UGH! Why do I need to pay for something that's not actually tuition?" I don't have an entirely clear answer on that, other than that for schools that are allowing you to transfer in almost an entire degree, they have to make some money somewhere. In any case, even with these "enrollment fees," you are still spending significantly less than you would to earn a degree at other schools.

The idea, then, is to earn as many credits as possible, before you enroll, to make sure you pay that fee only once (or possibly twice in COSC's case, since they work by semester.) You don't have to be already enrolled at a school to take exams or ALEKS or StraighterLine courses. You leave your credits "banked" until you are ready to apply to your college and then order your transcripts to be sent to the school for evaluation.

Let's get started now with looking at how to put together your degree plan. Unless you are absolutely set on one school over the others, I suggest you read the information below for all three colleges. You may find that you prefer one more than the other two after seeing what each school requires.